brazilian microgravity program: sounding rocket missions and allied reseachs
- Paper number
IAC-08.A2.3.11
- Author
Mr. Flávio de Azevedo Corrêa, Jr, Instituto de Aeronáutica e Espaço – IAE, Brazil
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Established in 1998 by the Brazilian Space Agency (Agencia Espacial Brasileira, AEB), the Brazilian Microgravity Program (BMP) not only has the goal to provide a regular sequence of flights opportunities to the Brazilian scientific community to perform experiments and/or test hardware facilities into a microgravity environment, but it is also responsible for the use of ISS facilities allocated to Brazil. The BMP’s structure has changed in 2006 to a lighter one. This paper will inform this new structure reassuring its goals and support activities, showing some of the program perspectives and finally reporting some aspects of its recent suborbital (Cuma II) and orbital (Centenary) missions. Although it is a national program, AEB endorses international cooperation by encouraging the establishment of partnerships between Brazilian and international scientific communities. As a matter of fact, the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR/MORABA) and the Instituto de Aeronaútica e Espaço (IAE) are already partners in BMP: the former provides the microgravity platform for the first flight missions and the latter provides the rocket motor. The microgravity platforms are based on the European TEXUS technology. Regarding the sounding rockets used in this Program, Brazil has two operational vehicles for microgravity purposes: the VS-30 and the VSB-30. The VS-30 has a successful flight history of carrying six European payloads and one Argentinean payload, five of the flights with Brazilian experiments onboard. It is a single-stage vehicle based on the first stage of the SONDA III rocket, capable to transport payloads with mass up to 230 kg during at least 240 seconds of ballistic flight above 110 km. Selected as a substitute for the Skylark 7 vehicle into European and Germany Microgravity Programs, the VSB-30 is a two-stage vehicle based on a boosted version of the VS-30 rocket, capable to transport payloads with mass up to 400 kg during at least 360 seconds of ballistic flight above 110 km. In a successful mission, its first qualification flight took place in 2004. In order to better attend its scientific community, Brazil decided to offer new opportunities to perform experiments onboard the ISS. Nowadays, the Microgravity Program published its 3rd Announcement of Opportunity (AO). The 3rd AO is selecting experiments for two different missions: a suborbital mission to be launched with an European payload (DLR/MORABA) at the Alcantara launch site in 2008 and an orbital one to perform experiments at ISS initially planed to be realized in 2009. The Microgravity Program has its activities assisted by governmental institutions such as IAE and the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), and by some scientific Brazilian association/institutions, such as the Academia Brasileira de Ciencias (ABC) and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq).
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)